MAY 1
by Eyesdown104
Summary: Brody muses on his life in politics and his first encounters with Roya Hammad. Based during/amongst/between the first three episodes of season two. No copyright claimed, infringement intended.
1. Chapter 1

Brody stood in front of the mirror with his towel round his waist preparing to shave, examining how much his beard had grown overnight, marveling at how life goes on despite everything. He recognised himself less and less when he looked at his own reflection, like the things he had done and was still doing were slowly driving his body and his psyche apart. He wondered what would happen when they split entirely. He was now Walden's running mate? A Vice-Presidential candidate. How on earth did that happen? It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious. Nazir would be pleased. Jess had been ecstatic.

He lowered his eyes to the reflection of his clavicle, to the scars scattered across his chest. Some of them were still rough and a livid red colour, especially after his hot shower, others were calming down a little, still raised but smooth and shiny, pink and silver. He raised his fingers to press against them.

_Carrie had kissed him right there, on that one... _

_Stop it._

Jess suddenly appeared behind him, coming in to grab a towel because she hadn't had the chance to dry her hair before Chris had started yelling about not being able to find his trainers. His stomach had lurched when he saw her. She moved too quickly. He wished she wouldn't do that. He had told her a thousand times that she mustn't creep up on him unannounced. He was likely to break her neck in reflex

"What? You saw me coming in the mirror, didn't you?", said Jess, seeing his startled expression but sick of walking on eggshells in her own home. She was a little frazzled this morning and Dana was driving her nuts. She did know not to surprise him but this time he had been staring right back at her in the bathroom mirror.

He nodded and made a face like it didn't matter, reaching for his razor. Jess disappeared again, calling Dana for the breakfast everyone knew she wouldn't eat. In fact he hadn't seen Jess coming, he had been thinking about Carrie. He seemed to spend a lot of time thinking about Carrie, or thinking about how he shouldn't be thinking about her, how it was unhealthy, how it was destructive. Then, inevitably, he just plain thought about her, revelled in it, tired of being doorman to his own thoughts. He suppressed it mostly, pushed it away with all the other things that he wasn't supposed to dwell on. Sometimes he made a good job of it, like just now in the shower, he absolutely was not thinking about her as he washed and he had turned the water temperature right down at one point just to make damn sure his body got the message. But just like that, she had popped up again while he stared at himself in the mirror.

A while later, he joined Chris at the table and mussed his hair while his son slurped up his Cheerios. Dana still hadn't emerged and Jess was getting increasingly irate.

"Dana! Would you get out here?!" Jess yelled.

"Jeez, mom, _alright_!", moaned Dana, finally appearing in her school uniform and throwing down her bag, her tie and skirt way short, shirt untucked, impossible unlaced boots on the end of her skinny legs.

"Can you at least try to look decent for school? We just paid for that uniform and already it looks like...uh!" snapped Jess.

"You're right mom, I mean, I wouldn't want to look like a kid who got in on a scholarship, right? You want me to look like I _belong_ there, don't you?", Dana replied sarcastically, making a big show of tucking in her shirt and straightening her tie.

Brody raised his eyebrows at Dana. It was enough. She took a seat at the table and drank some juice.

"Will you eat something?", sighed Jess.

"I'm not hungry", her daughter replied.

"She says she's not hungry", repeated Brody, looking at Jess. His tiny intervention between wife and daughter sufficient to let them all know that he was tired of it already. He went back to eating and scanning his calendar on his phone, looking at the week's engagements. He screwed up his nose. Walden wanted him and Jess to attend some arms industry function the following evening. The thought of pressing the flesh and working the room with that filth made his blood run cold. But then a lot of what he did these days made him feel that way.

He and Jess were much in demand. They were calling them the new Kennedy and Onassis. It was calculated. He had red hair and she was good looking, that's as far as it went that he could see. It was all surface and Walden was making the most of it. He was the war hero and she the devoted wife and mother who looked good in a shift dress. Jess had absorbed this somehow and he had to double take when she got ready for a dinner one night and stood at the foot of the bed in a twin set suit with her hair bouffed. All she needed was a string of pearls and some Chanel sunglasses. Jesus. He wondered if Cynthia Walden had been slipping her style tips, in turn prompted by the PR machine behind Walden. It really did make him sick, them using Jess as a puppet, Walden trading off Brody's name, his ordeal. Brody had deep political convictions but they were nothing he ever aired through his job, he would be laughed off Walden's team as soon as he opened his mouth. He toed the party line. He wasn't there for what he stood for, he was there for what he _represented_ to the electorate, whether that was true or not.

Every day after his morning prayer he would take a moment to remember Issa and remind himself why he was doing all this. That's what got him through.


	2. Chapter 2

His aide announced the visit of Roya Hammad. Brody was getting a lot of interest from the press now that he was nominated as Walden's running mate.

Brody greeted her in the way he had learned to. He was a politician now and he was getting good at it. It was all about acting a part, if not outright deception, and he had plenty of experience of that. He stepped in to her, gave her his effusive, bright _vote-for-me_ Congressman greeting, a firm handshake, his charming (he hoped) smile. It was important to get the media on side.

She was very attractive, polished, every bit the glamorous roving reporter. Actually, she was more highbrow, he imagined she would go far and become at least a news anchor, a political commentator maybe. She had the clipped tones of one educated in esteemed old private schools and ever more ancient and revered British universities. She had the well-tailored suit, the killer heels, the tumbling coiffed hair, she smelled good. She was telegenic. She was Pakistani but she wasn't buttoned up and running around in a hijab, she was accessible to America, undeniably female in that classy feline way but still somehow untouchable. Brody could imagine that she got a lot of attention from the old suits in the halls, some of them would patronisingly refer to her as 'exotic'. He imagined that she would shrug that off and just use their prejudice to her advantage. He admired that. Her image was that of a westernised, educated Muslim woman, deliberately less 'other', unthreatening and wholly acceptable to an American audience bred to fear brown skin and those 'rogue nations'. It was obvious that she understood the climate and had cultivated a brand accordingly. Brody didn't really see colour. Not in the way that many people seemed to. When you had been reduced to raw cartilage and a naked whimper, you realised that this was all you really were and this was all the man next to you was too. Not white, not black, not brown. Not one identifier held fast when it really came down to it. Not a man, not a woman, not a Marine, not a journalist. There was something about the way she spoke though, slowly, a very refined drawl that slid round her perfect teeth. Slightly serpentine. They smiled at each other and sat down, something silently rankling him. Her voice and her beautifully light, mesmeric eyes betrayed a contradictory darkness like the lithe miracle of a cobra stealthily rearing up over its prey. She wanted something from him.

After fleeting moments of small talk, she flared her hood and struck.

"Abu Nazir sends his best regards." Her demeanor had changed in a heartbeat.

Brody flinched. This was the fucking CIA again. Had to be. Another honey trap, another beautiful woman sent in to catch him off guard. Did they think he was _stupid_? His heart was hammering but he thought he hid it okay, he indulged her a few lines about how her family went way back with Nazir's and then he asked Roya to leave. At that point she mentioned Issa and the crows and his slingshot. This was for real. She told him that Nazir needed his help. She explained that Brody was being asked to retrieve information on potential targets from Estes' safe during his briefing with him on homeland security the following day. His stomach churned at the thought of what Nazir would do with information like that. He felt sweat gathering under his hair on his temples. He was fulfilling his part of the bargain, he was using his position as Congressman to influence lawmakers. Helping him in this would make him a terrorist. Brody was not a terrorist. Roya called it a justifiable act of retaliation, said that they were at war, told him that he needed to choose a side. The mere suggestion that Brody could be on the side of Walden was repugnant to him. He had already proven his loyalty to Nazir. Tom Walker was dead. _Again_.

He suddenly longed to be back at the breakfast table refereeing between Jess and Dana. Brody felt himself being sucked back into the maelstrom, twirling in the eddy, saltwater in his lungs.


	3. Chapter 3

Nazir wanted proof of allegiance. Brody was still unsure whether he could give it if it meant that he would be ultimately responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians. But he didn't care to think of the consequences if he refused. It was as if he was in the clutches of a ruthless loan shark, Brody kept making payments but the calculation of the amount needed in order to settle up grew ever greater.

Estes was going to brief Brody on homeland security as a favour to Walden. _The irony_. David casually mentioned his history with Walden and the inception of the drone programme which had killed Issa and hundreds like him and immediately set Brody's teeth on edge. He was so flippant about it, he couldn't even cite to the nearest thousand how many predators they now deployed. Eight thousand or nine thousand, he shrugged. _Red rag to a bull._ Why would he know the exact number? The drones had cut the heart out of Al Qaeda, after all, that was the important fact to know. Brody noted that he had conveniently omitted the fact that for every Al Qaeda operative they killed, scores of innocents also died. This was the same guy who smiled when he told him that Carrie was in a nuthouse, that she wouldn't bother the Brodys again, so pressing charges and bringing disrepute on his Agency would achieve little but embarrassment for all and the displeasure of Walden.

Brody knew that schools were routinely flattened, villages of civilians decimated because the unmanned aircraft were too indiscriminate, or those controlling them by satellite too fucking callous to care about the difference between innocent human life and valid military targets. Although the deafening screams of agony of the dying and those in anguish from the survivors rang out, piercing the heavens and raking hell, silence reigned across the western world. Data on civilian casualties was not published, was covered up or the reports were sickeningly dismissed as propaganda generated by Al Qaeda. News footage of little brown bodies piled up at the hospital was not broadcast. The tiny hands poking out from under blood-sodden blankets, palms raised in supplication, never made it onto tv. U.S. citizens slept easy in their beds, comfortable in the knowledge that their foes did not have drones, that the War on Terror was being taken care of thousands of miles away on their behalf. It was never made clear at what price. The extent of the state-sponsored murder masquerading as a just war went unuttered. Brody believed that history would record this as The War _of_ Terror, not The War _on_ Terror. The average American watched the furious citizens of the Middle East screaming murder and burning the stars and stripes in the street and they wondered what they had done to offend them so.

Brody couldn't help himself and was just about to lock horns with this arrogant son of a bitch Estes when he remembered where he was, _who he was supposed to be_ and pulled back just in time. They were interrupted, just as Roya said they would be, and just at the crucial moment to diffuse Estes' sense that Brody was criticising Walden and the employment of drone attacks. If his ire had registered, Brody would say he was playing devil's advocate, just trying to get the measure of Estes. The flash of anger had put and end to his wavering. As soon as Estes had left his office Brody began searching for the safe, suffocating the thought of what Nazir would do with this information and focusing on it instead as an act against Estes personally.

Brody had crossed a new line but Nazir could no longer be in doubt. He sincerely wished his part was done, that he could now go back to playing Congressman without finding Roya coiled in the corner of his office.

He had proved his allegiance to Nazir once again before the week was out. Brody had saved Nazir's life, risked everything to send him the 'MAY 1' text and get him out of danger. Walden had drawn him into that control room at the Pentagon, he was wired about _something_. Brody was only even there doing Walden's dirty work, to charm the Secretary of Defence into granting an export licence for a bunker-buster device for use in Iran. Between Roya, Nazir and Walden they had him in a spin, he agreed with nothing they asked of him yet circumstances dictated that he delivered every time. Brody wondered if he would even be able to see his own reflection in the mirror when he shaved the following day. Perhaps he would only be able to make out the mist of his breath on the glass.

Brody had felt claustrophobic in that control room from the off, there were too many people huddled around the table and he didn't know any of them. Walden was enjoying it, getting a kick out of it whatever it was. He had been Director of the CIA and he clearly missed this kind of thing. He told him right at the last moment that they were there to get Nazir. Brody nearly swallowed his tongue. He knew that all eyes were on the footage coming from Beirut but he tried with all his might to keep a straight face, to breathe normally, to keep from shaking. He knew that if anyone noticed, they might misconstrue his reaction as the nervousness of an ex PoW at the thought of the man responsible for his detainment finally getting his comeuppance. Or they might call him on the nervous wreck that he was.

It was him, he knew it was. Brody recognised a couple of Nazir's men clearing the way for him. Those around the table murmured and the orders were given. Brody did not want to witness the assassination of Abu Nazir. He would yelp if they shot him and they would stretcher him off to the same institution Carrie was in. He reached for his phone and sent the text, obscured by the desk. He held his breath, waiting for the blipping sound of the electronic interference to register on the audio or the video to give him up. It didn't. Nazir was warned and ducked back inside the car but in the ensuing chaos a couple of people were hit. Brody pushed his palm down on his knee to subdue the frantic jiggling he could not contain.

Nazir had later thanked him via Roya. The only thanks Brody required was to be left alone.

"He needs you." Roya had said.

That was all it took, really. He couldn't refuse him.


End file.
